ESL Conversation Starters

One thing that has been really helpful for me as a teacher in China has been sharing ideas and lesson plans with other teachers. I don't know if I will continue to be a teacher for the long term, but I figured that whatever experience I did gain in this one year could still be helpful for others! I've decided that whenever I come across an idea that really works well with my students, I'll share it on here!

For starters, our school's English corner last Monday went really well. Every week Betsy meets with the student leaders to help them come up with discussion questions. This week the students wanted the topic to be "Your Life Story." Of course, many students who come to English corner are from other departments at the university, and their English is usually not so great, so we needed something to help them get started talking.

I suggested doing a happiness line graph. This idea was actually based on a reflective activity that we did at a couple ICF leadership meetings (many of my ideas actually are derived from InterVarsity leadership experience... go figure). The x-axis of the graph is time in years starting from when you were born until the present. The y-axis is a scale of how happy you were. So if you were really happy at a certain point in your life, you should draw your line going higher at that point on the graph. It makes more sense if you look at the picture.

The x-axis units say "born, elementary school, middle school, high school, university, now."
I guess I've been steadily getting happier!

This worked surprisingly well! I thought maybe the idea would confuse students, but in the end, having a visual really helped them to talk about their experiences growing up, both the good and the bad. It was a great time of conversation!

This idea can also be used for any conversation group; not just English learners!

Hope this is helpful! Have fun conversing! :)

My Favorite Things: Seoul, South Korea

Welcome back to my second post in my series of blogs about my winter travels. My second stop, after Shanghai, was Seoul, South Korea!

I think I was definitely blessed in that unlike the typical tourist, I had many native Korean friends who were gracious enough to show Richard and me around. My lovely friend Semi even let me stay at her apartment in Hongdae. Without Semi and BoYoung and Ran and Luigi and all my other friends, knowing where to go and how to order probably would've been much more difficult, but here are some of my favorite things from Korea anyway, and if you go, you can do them too!

1. Shopping in Kangnam

I love this area. The subway station at Kangnam has a HUUUGE underground shopping area, where Richard and I stocked up on BB creams at just a few of the MANY cosmetics stores. I'm not kidding about the "many." Literally every other store was a cosmetics store.

Richard buying his cosmetics.

Above ground there is a whole street of shops and boutiques, including popular department stores like Uniqlo. I bought a nice coat at one of the boutiques!

There was also a SUPER SUPER CUTE knick knacks store that sold pretty much everything: stationary, house things, makeup, hair accessories... I wanted to buy everything. Richard bought these boot holders for his mom. I don't have a picture of it, but it was pretty much like this picture I found on google images:

Kangnam is also where Ran treated us to a delicious duck BBQ. Yum! Thanks Ran! <3 <3 <3

2. The Teddy Bear Museum at the N Seoul Tower

THIS PLACE WAS SO CUTE. The N Seoul Tower is an observatory tower where you can go up and look out over Seoul. On the first floor of the tower they have a teddy bear museum! It's a walk through museum that displays the history of Korea from ancient times all the way to present day using teddy bears! The bears are dressed as people and even move in some of the displays. I took a picture with every one.

Look! An ancient Korean bear scholar!

I'll spare you and only put up one picture of me posing with life size bears.

The view from the top of the tower was really pretty at night.

Outside, there is a super couply patio area, where lovebirds can go and leave a lock on the fence as some sort of symbol of everlasting love or whatever. I don't know - I prefer the bears.

Being couply

After leaving the tower, Luigi led us back to his university where we ate jokbal (pig's feet) at a nearby restaurant. It was super delicious, but it looked like the restaurant doesn't see tourists very often. If I wanted to go back there again (which I do), I would definitely need Luigi to take me haha.

It was so delicious we forgot to take a picture before we ate it all.

3. Hongdae

If you are a young adult or want to experience Korean contemporary culture, this is the place to be. It's like a college student's dream. Hongdae is an area just full of little shops: coffee shops, especially, but also restaurants, boutiques, cosmetics stores, etc. Seriously, this place is just PACKED with college-age students filling up every coffee shop on every corner of every street. Semi, Boyoung, Richard and I had coffee at the place where they filmed the Coffee Prince Korean drama.

We also met up with our other friends, Min, HaJin, Emi, Kim, Luigi, and Seulbee to get kimchi jigae (kimchi stew) for dinner.

Yummm

Afterwards Seulbee suggested we go to a more Korean style pub to drink makgeolli, a traditional Korean rice wine that they drink out of bowls.

It was really fun just to hang out here with friends and experience some contemporary Korean culture!

4. Brunch buffet at the Hilton in Seoul with BoYoung.

Okay, this is probably not something most people do when they visit Korea, BUT how could I not mention our fabulous meal?? BoYoung was a great tour guide of Seoul, and on our last day there, her parents treated us to a buffet at the Millenium Hilton hotel right outside Seoul station. It was such a treat! :)

Other things we did:

Of course Richard and I also did other touristy things like visit Gyeongbokgung (the palace), Cheonggyecheon (manmade waterway), Myeongdong (more shopping), Insadong (souvenir shopping), and Bukchon (traditional village), which were very fun and interesting. If we were to come back, though, we probably won't need to do all those tourist things again. We just want to hang out with friends. :)

Food:

Richard and I were really glad we tried the jokbal because it's definitely something not really common in southern California, at least to our knowledge. Semi and BoYoung took us to more places to eat in InsaDong and around SamcheongDong but I can't remember the names of the food, sadly. BUT one other food we really liked, besides all the delicious things already mentioned, was this spicy ddukbokki from Hot Dduk in Kangnam!

But really, EVERYTHING we ate was so good. I love Korean food. I will definitely go back to Korea just to eat and shop.

Whew! And that's my Korean experience! As you can see, I loved it!

Next up: Tokyo!

Kristen's Cheesy Potato Soup with a Kick

Living in China, sometimes I just really miss Western food. Western restaurants are few and far between and the supermarkets are stocked with unfamiliar goods for an American like me, so I've learned to work with what I've got.

And sometimes that results in some super awesome meals made from scratch! Like tonight! Here is my recipe for a cheese and potato soup that I found quite delicious.

Ingredients (serves 4):
1/2 carrot (diced)
1/2 onion (diced)
2 cloves of garlic (sliced)
2 large potatoes (diced)
2 tbs flour
5 cups water
1/2 cup milk
8 oz. Velveeta or other cheese
Butter or olive oil
salt and pepper
Cayenne pepper sauce or Tabasco sauce (optional)

Disclaimer: Okay, so you may have noticed that some things on the ingredient list seem odd for China, and you're right. The Velveeta was kindly sent to me by my lovely friend Elizabeth, and the Red Hot cayenne pepper sauce was brought here by Betsy.

Step 1: Saute the carrots, onions, and garlic in butter or olive oil. You could also use different veggies here too, like broccoli. Or other yummy things, like ham.

Step 2: Once the onions look soft and translucent, add a little flour to create a roux. I actually didn't really measure anything in making this soup, so 2 tbs is just an estimate.

Step 3: Add in the potatoes and water (which should completely submerge all the vegetables). Boil until the potatoes are very soft and mashable.

Step 4: Use a potato masher to mash some of the potato pieces, creating a creamy soup. You don't have to mash all of the pieces, just enough to get it creamy.

Mash mash mash!

Step 5: Add in milk and cheese. I used 8 oz, but if you like it really cheesy, add as much as you want!

Mmm cheese!

Step 6: Add salt and pepper to taste... and because I live in southern China and I can't live without spicy food anymore, I added quite a bit of Red Hot cayenne sauce. It definitely added a little kick to the flavor! It still tastes good without, though.

Ahhh so delicious! I only wish I had a better camera so that it looked as good as it tasted. I am definitely going to make this soup over and over again!

My Favorite Things: Shanghai

For almost all of February, I was traveling around Asia visiting different friends and exploring different cities. I figured that blogging about every detail of my whole month would probably take another whole month or more, so I decided to just share a few highlights from each place.

So here is the first installment of my new blog post series: My Favorite Things! Today's post topic - Shanghai!

Of course my number one favorite thing has to be seeing my boyfriend after 6 months :)

Richard at breakfast our first morning in Shanghai

But in terms of touristy things and seeing the city, here are a couple things I really liked:

1. Souvenir shopping around the Yu Yuan Garden and Temple of the Town God.

There are tons of shops all selling very Chinese style souvenirs.

The temple was super crowded because it was right around Chinese New Year!

I bought this teapot (and matching teacups)!

Richard, with his Chinese bargaining skills, also helped me buy some tea at one of the many tea shops to give away to friends! And he bought some pretty paintings on scrolls that I don't have pictures of to give to his boss.

One word of warning, though, I thought the food sold around the little shops there was just okay. But maybe that's just due to my American taste buds. Next time, I would rather spend more money and eat at Din Tai Feng :P

2. The Shanghai Ocean Aquarium!

I just think aquariums are cool, and this one has the longest underwater tunnel in the world (at least that's what I heard). Here are some pictures from inside the tunnel.

The aquarium is also a short walk away from the Jinmao Observation Tower... which, okay, wasn't the most exciting thing in the world. Observation towers are nice, and I like getting to see the whole city, but now that I've done it once, I don't need to do it again for a while, especially at a price of 100 RMB a person, which I think is pretty expensive for China.

View from the top. You can see the Oriental Pearl Tower!

At least I can say I've been once, though!

Overall, I really enjoyed Shanghai. There's good food and some fun things to see. I don't know if it would keep me entertained for more than 4 days, and you have to be okay with crowds (this is China), but I would definitely like to go back someday :)

Korea blog post coming soon!

Things My Students Say: Chinese and Smoking

It's the start of a new semester! I feel like some of my students may not respect my authority..

Me: Here are the class rules - DON'T SPEAK CHINESE!
Students: Hao, hao!
Me: ... I hate you guys.

Or maybe it's just a lack of social skills..

Betsy: Mark, have you smoked any cigarettes lately?
Mark (exhaling into Betsy's face): HAAAAAAAAAAAA!
Me: ... Could've just said no...

Welcome back.